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Short Samples:
Rhetorica Antiqua
(Last update: May 3th, 2003. The version of T-LAB used was 3.0)

T-LAB functions used in this short example are those highlighted in red in the image on the right.

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In recent years interest in classical rhetoric has produced an innumerable series of studies and publications. One of the first authors to "rediscover" the works of the classics was Roland Barthes, in a seminary held in Paris at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (1964-1965).
Clearly, this is not the place to host a scientific debate. Our intention is very limited: to show how T-LAB can help develop new avenues of research on the topic.
By way of illustration, we have selected three "classics": Cicero's De Oratore, the Rhetorica ad Herennium and the Institutio Oratoria by Quintilian.
Firstly, treating the three works as three distinct "corpora", we compared the Associations of one of the most important key words: oratio (speech, exposition).

DE ORATORE (Cicero)
  

In the three graphs, the word under examination (ORATIO) is placed in the center and all the others are distributed around it, each at a distance proportional to its degree of association.

In other words, the meaningful relationships are only those between the central word and each of the others. For each, its proximity to the center indicates the degree of association with the ORATIO within the same sentences (the elementary contexts).

For every graph T-LAB provides a table with the relevant indices of association.
RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM
INSTITUTIO ORATORIA (Quintilianus)

Subsequently, we put the three works together into a single corpus.
In order to analyze the respective relationships of similarity/dissimilarity we used another T-LAB tool: the Correspondences Analysis.

 

In the map that we obtained each point indicates the "position" of one of the 3 classics examined: CICERo, QUINTilian, HERENnium.

The two-dimensional space is organized along two axes (X-horizontal, Y-vertical) which, just as with topographical maps, represent the "compass points" (north-south, east-west) and therefore help to orientate the interpretation.
In statistical terms, the two axes are factors.
As can be seen, on the horizontal axis - which in statistical terms "weighs" more - the comparison distinguishes Cicero (De Oratore) and the Rhetorica ad Herennium on the one hand, and Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria) on the other.

In T-LAB, each correspondence analysis provides tables that allow users to interpret the factors and the relationships of similarity/dissimilarity within the two-dimensional areas.
Also, for every subset of the corpus the Specificities tool identifies which words are characteristic, on the basis of over-use or under-use, in relation to the corpus under examination.
The tables that follow show the words over-used in the three books under examination.
NB: in every table, the numerical values are those of the CHI square.

DE ORATORE (Cicero)
RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM
INSTITUTIO ORATORIA (Quintilianus)